Affirmative Action - History

Affirmative Action is defined by Webster's New World College Dictionary as " a policy or program for correcting the effects of discrimination in the employment or education of members of certain groups." The phrase "affirmative action" was coined by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 when he issued Executive Order 10925, initiating the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246. This order required federal contractors to take "affirmative action" to increase the number of minorities that they employed. Thus affirmative action was born. However, when Kennedy and Johnson established affirmative action, they did not ...

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seeking admission into higher education. However, this is not a valid point. While affirmative action creates equal opportunity for some individuals, it discriminates against others, primarily white males. Therefore, affirmative action uses reverse discrimination to solve the problem of discrimination. Do two wrongs make a right? The answer is no.
The first reason affirmative action should be stopped is that employees often are hired that are not qualified to execute their jobs effectively. Many times employers are forced to find the best minority, rather than the person most qualified for the job. For example, a policy was adopted by Duke University in 1993 that required each department at the university to hire at least one new African-American for a faculty position (Pasour). However, various surveys and estimates show that less than 4,000 blacks receive Ph.D.s in the United States. This is less than two black Ph.D.s for every American college or university (Sowell). ...

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and universities. The first problem affirmative action establishes for minorities is that it places a stigma on groups who benefit from affirmative action, especially those who actually earn their position because they are qualified for it. Consider an employer who hires a member of a minority group on the basis of merit alone. Many employees automatically assume that the individual's appointment resulted from affirmative action. Thus, any employee who does benefit from affirmative action bears the brand of "not being the best pick, but only the best pick from a limited group (Pasour)." The second problem it creates for minorities in the workplace is the loss of spirit and vitality for ...

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